The Extinction of Houston - 2

Downtown tomorrow

The 4th largest city in the U.S.eh? is paralyzed in an ongoing anthropogenic disaster.

It is thereby confronted with an uncanny vision of the future (The Extinction of Houston).

But it is real now, not later, and it is happening to people alive today, not to their children sometime in the distant future.

In the first post of this series I contemplated sea level rise, which is a slow motion reality unlike the fast-forward scenario taking place in today's current ongoing disaster.

A disaster that is not only taking place in Houston, but is also taking place all along the Gulf Coast of Texas.

This catastrophe is brought on by Category 4 hurricane Harvey, which is now a tropical storm that is not leaving anytime soon enough, because there are no "steering fronts" to push it away, no jet stream to push it along to harm someone else somewhere else.

Some meteorologists are calling this the greatest flood-disaster in U.S. history, and perhaps the worst disaster ever in U.S. history.

Downtown today

It still has a few days to go before we know for sure.

The ongoing slow sea level rise disaster doesn't help, because it is rendering large parts of the Houston metroplex into below-sea-level areas.

Today's danger, tomorrow's danger, and the danger the next day after that will unfortunately be views into the future of Houston and other U.S. cities along the coast, such as New York City.

I mean "views" that give us a true reality vision of what is slowly but surely coming (permanent inundation).

It is not pretty now, but it will be worse then.

Elderly await rescue in flooded group-home

The most striking thing to me is that there were days of forewarnings, (enough forewarning to have relocated the most vulnerable to safer places).

Just as there have been days of forewarning, there have been years of forewarning on the sea level rise dangers, yet, very few, percentage wise, are able to heed the warnings (Choose Your Trances Carefully, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8).

As a result, "as we speak," the emergency services are spread thin.

People have to wait four or five hours on the roofs of their houses for rescue, if rescue comes at all.

And there are more days of rain in the potential forecast, the highest being as much as five feet of rain accumulation in some places (now already piling up in rivers, lakes, streets, homes, roads, and businesses).

The denier governments are dumbing down those in danger areas, and thereby increasing death and injury to citizens who follow and believe those official deniers:

"But county and city officials responsible for addressing flooding largely reject

Downtown policy

these arguments. Houston’s two top flood control officials say their biggest challenge is not managing rapid growth but retrofitting outdated infrastructure. Current standards that govern how and where developers and residents can build are mostly sufficient, they say. And all the recent monster storms are freak occurrences — not harbingers of global warming or a sign of things to come."

(Texas Tribune). From the idiotic messages of the president on down to agency leaders, governors, and local mayors, they preach lies to their constituents and those constituents suffer for it.

This is going to increase as time goes on, unless those deniers in power are taken out of office, or voted out of office, permanently.

The previous post in this series is here.

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